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Sources Say • Novick piles up the cash

Some candidates have been updating their campaign finance reports, even though election laws allow them up to keep their contributions and expenditures secret for up to 30 days.

One bit of news is how well Steve Novick is doing. As everyone knows, the state health analyst easily won election to the City Council seat being vacated by Randy Leonard. But he also has more than $16,000 in the bank that he can either carry forward to his next race or donate to other candidates.

Novick also reports spending more than $48,000 on WinningMark, the media and management firm headed by well-connected political consultant Mark Weiner.

Other consultants who struck it rich in May's primary election are Stacy Dycus, who received more than $32,000 for working on Jefferson Smith's campaign for Portland mayor; consultant Elizabeth Kaufman, who received at least $48,000 for managing Charlie Hale's campaign for mayor; and Innovative Campaign Strategies, the campaign management firm that received at least $26,500 for working Eileen Brady's campaign for mayor.

Romney's no Bush, or even Quayle

Recent protests against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney didn't live up to previous protests that led the first President Bush's (No. 41) security team to dub the city "Little Beruit."

Although more than 100 Democrats, union members, pro-choice activists and others gathered outside the June 4 fundraiser at the Governor Hotel, that's a far cry from the thousands that greeted the second President Bush (No. 43) when he appeared at a 2002 fundraiser for Republican U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith.

During that melee, riot-geared police dispersed the crowd with tear gas and rubber bullets, leading to a civil rights lawsuit that the city eventually settled.

At least some of the anti-Romney protesters were creative, however, including those who laid under a red carpet in the street so attendees could walk over them on the way to the hotel. Still, that's not quite as imaginative as the so-called Reverse Peristalsis Painters who swallowed food coloring and vomited red, white and blue when Vice President Dan Quayle came to town in 1990.

Blumenauer keeps busy

When you represent an ultra-safe congressional district like Democrat Earl Blumenauer does, how do you spend your time during election years? Campaigning for other like-minded congressional candidates, it turns out.

That's why the June 14 fundraiser at Veterans Memorial Coliseum was held by the Blumenauer Century Fund and not the Blumenauer for Congress Committee.

The century fund was a special committee formed to raise money for both Blumenauer's re-election campaign and another campaign committee he oversees. It's the Committee for a Livable Future, a so-called leadership committee formed in 1996 to raise money for other campaigns.